Outside In | Eisenhower was right, every missile fired is a theft from those in need
- With so many nations struggling to provide electricity and clean water, and to rebuild healthcare and education, it’s a travesty that billions of dollars are being diverted to arms production and defence
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired [is] a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he said.
“This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 [ … ] We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
“This,” he warned, “is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
In the same way, each intercepted Iranian missile, a brief flare in the night over Jerusalem, is a theft in food, clothing, housing and hospitals from millions in need.
